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Mr Sanders alleged he was framed by corrupt Chicago Heights police officers for the murder of gang member Phillip Atkins.

Atkins was shot dead in December 1993 when four men forced him and his girlfriend, 19-year-old Stacy Armstrong, out of a car at gunpoint.

They made him admit to being a member of the Mickey Cobras street gang before the leader ordered his killing.

Rodell Sanders, right, who was granted a new trial for a slaying he was convicted of nearly two decades ago is joined by his attorneys Russell Ainsworth, left, and Steve Greenberg

A Cook County jury found the 49-year-old Sanders not guilty late on Tuesday night. Sanders was arrested in 1994 by Chicago Heights police and charged with murder. He spent 20 years in prison

Armstrong was also shot three times but survived.

As the sole eyewitness, she told police the leader of the gang was thin and picked out a photo of Mr Sanders, a member of the rival Gangster Disciples street gang, from a line-up.

Later at his trial, Armstrong identified Mr Sanders, who said he was playing cards with friends on the night of the slaying, as the man who had ordered the shootings and he was convicted.

But lawyers for Mr Sanders allege that two Chicago Heights police detectives had cropped a photo of Sanders so his shoulders were cut out to make him look thinner.

Further, Mr Sanders' attorneys claim that during the investigation authorities cut a deal with the man they believe committed the murder.

Russell Ainsworth, who represented Mr Sanders, said the deal allowed him to plead guilty to armed robbery and serve five years in prison in exchange for his testimony against Sanders.

Mr Ainsworth added: 'This case is the embodiment of a shoddy police investigation.'

A judge eventually awarded Sanders a new trial based on his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel.

Prosecutors appealed, but in 2011 an appeals court upheld the ruling. Last year his first retrial ended with a hung jury, with 11 voting to convict and one not.

That one juror gave Mr Sanders a lifeline, and another re-trial was ordered. He was finally cleared by a Cook County jury on Tuesday night.

In 2013, Sanders' attorneys filed a federal lawsuit again the officers and other members of the Chicago Heights police department as well as the town alleging they violated his civil rights.

The case is pending.

Sanders said that before his original trial prosecutors had informally offered him a plea deal that Ainsworth said called for him to be sentenced to about 23 years in prison, but he never considered taking it. He ultimately was sentenced to 80 years in prison after his conviction.

'I’m not going to plead guilty to a crime I did not commit,' he said Wednesday. 'If they’d allow me to walk out the same day I signed the paper, I wouldn’t of did it.'